


feeling very still

by akamine_chan



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 15:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16390133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamine_chan/pseuds/akamine_chan
Summary: Eddie gets an anonymous tip about a hot story and ends up having feelings. With Venom. As one does.





	feeling very still

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadySmutterella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySmutterella/gifts).



> Thanks to Lady_Smutterella for the beta, and the cheering.
> 
> Title from _Space Oddity_ by David Bowie.

"Well, this has been a colossal waste of time."

Venom agrees.

Eddie shivers and zips his hoodie all the way up. It's a damp night, and they've been standing out here in the middle of the forest long enough for him to get chilled.

This wild goose chase had started with an anonymous link to a grainy black-and-white video that showed starved-looking women and children chained to workbenches, heads bent as they cut and sewed clothes. A guard, armed with a shotgun and a snarl, stood over them.

At the end of the video, there had been a blurb claiming that the sweat shop was one of many owned by someone high up in Californian politics, producing luxury clothes for exclusive boutiques in LA.

It had turned Eddie's stomach.

The unidentified source had requested a face-to-face meeting with Eddie, with the promise of more evidence, enough to take down the politician, and others. Eddie had gotten a date and time, and a GPS coordinate which turned out to be in the middle of fucking nowhere. Well, technically, they're in a wilderness area north of the city.

"Hungry," Venom rumbles.

"Christ, _again_? You just ate—"

Eddie had let Venom out, and they'd run loose through the trees, and when they'd startled a deer, a big one with a wide crown of antlers—

He could still taste the blood, hot and metallic across their tongue, and the crunch of bones between their teeth. There is a part of Eddie that is horrified, repulsed by the vicious joy Venom radiates as they eat their prey, but the longer they're together, the easier it is to ignore any lingering disquiet.

"I'm eating for two, Eddie."

Eddie can't help but laugh at that, a loud, genuine sound that echoes across the small clearing. Smug satisfaction spreads out from somewhere in the middle of his chest; Venom likes making Eddie laugh.

"We have tater tots at home," Eddie says.

"And chocolate," Venom says. It's really not a question.

Eddie tries _not_ to think about the secret stash of chocolate on the top shelf of his closet, but Venom zeroes in on the image of the Hershey's bars that are shoved behind some old sweaters and a box of newspaper clippings.

It's hard to hide something from an intelligence that lives in your body and in your brain, but Eddie had managed it, for a short while.

"Eddie," Venom chides. "We are friends. Friends _share_."

"I was saving them for emergencies," he mumbles.

He wonders how much an alien lifeform can actually understand about the idea of _friends_. He's done some reading, and he's pretty sure that friendship isn't much different in concept from mutualistic symbiosis.

"We are one," Venom says. "Better together."

And Eddie can't deny that. "It's just my fucking luck that the person who knows me best is a parasitic shapeshifting pile of goo from outer space," he says under his breath.

"Loser," Venom says with a hiss, and Eddie laughs.

There's a flash of light and when Eddie looks up, he's astonished by the swath of glittering pinpoints in the night sky. The enormous redwood trees block the glow from the city and in the darkness, there's a dizzying circle of stars above him.

It's beautiful, and makes him feel insignificant in the face of an infinite universe.

His eyes track a streak of light. "A shooting star!" he says. Another couple of streaks pass over, dissolving into a shower of sparks as the meteors skim across the atmosphere.

"What is it?"

"A meteor shower," Eddie says slowly, remembering all the recent blurbs about it on news sites. "Debris from a passing comet—"

A wave of despair and hopeless longing almost drops Eddie to his knees. He only manages to stay upright by falling against a tree. He holds tight, head spinning, and the bark bites into the palm of his hand. The minor pain grounds him against the tidal wave of emotions. "V—"

"My kind didn't originate on that comet, the one that we were found on," Venom says dispassionately.

Eddie presses his cheek to the bark, almost hugging the tree, because it feels like there's a black hole in his chest, something so lonely and cold that it swallows all the light. "Where did you come from, then?"

There's a pause, wound tight with tension, and it stretches for so long that Eddie thinks that Venom's not going to answer, and then—

"Far, far away. Home's gone now, a long time ago, and there's so few of us left. And just me, alone here."

Eddie swallows hard, because it's a brutal kind of knowledge, to know that you are the last. The only. But— "You're not alone. You have me." It's true, and Eddie knows it, all of him, blood and bone and everything he is belongs to Venom.

"You _are_ mine," Venom says. "And I am yours."

Venom settles a little, the fear and heartache diminishing, and Eddie can breathe easier. "We are one."

"Yesssss," Venom says. "But—hungry."

Eddie sighs, because he knows they'll be eating the hidden chocolate when they get home. He finds that he really doesn't mind all that much.

-fin-

**Author's Note:**

> Actualfax beta comment from LadySmutterella: _AKA. HOW DARE. HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME FEEL AN EMOTION._
> 
> My job here is done.


End file.
